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April 29, 2010

Australia Removes Naming and Branding From Cigarette Packs, World Health Organization (WHO) Urges Rest of World to Do the Same

Australia is going to sell no-brand cigarettes and the WHO wants other countries to follow their lead.

In Australia, starting July 1, 2012, cigarette companies will be forced to use "plain, logo-free packaging on their cigarettes in a bid to make them less attractive to smokers."

Instead of logos and alluring typography, there will be dire health warnings for smokers, and the brand name itself will be in a tiny, generic font at the bottom of the pack.

Australian tobacco companies are less than impressed.

Some have called this the most draconian anti-smoking law ever, and the packs could feature pretty gruesome pictures of cancerous body parts.

The Ozzies even plan on clamping down on Internet advertising. But some think that this might give rise to is a "grey market" in cigarette branded stickers and slipcases, as well as cigarette cases like you see in old 50s movies.

Yes, people will actually buy stickers with their favorite brand names on them and paste them on the ugly cigarette packs. Or buy cigarette stickers that make fun of anti-smoking messages such as, "Smoking is cool," and, "You could get hit by a bus tomorrow."

There is a pretty strong body of evidence out there that says plain packaging will cut down cigarette consumption. Regulators here would be " taking one of the most carefully branded products in the world, and de-branding it," stripping the cigarettes down to just their "name, taste and cost."

Will it work? In a Science Direct article, Daniella Germain concludes that:

"When brand elements such as color, branded fonts, and imagery were progressively removed from cigarette packs, adolescents perceived packs to be less appealing, rated attributes of a typical smoker of the pack less positively, and had more negative expectations of cigarette taste. Pack appeal was reduced even further when the size of the pictorial health warning on the most plain pack was increased from 30% to 80% of the pack face, with this effect apparent among susceptible nonsmokers, experimenters, and established smokers."

Cigarette companies are probably going to try to change the color of the cigarettes themselves, or even focus on the interior foil of the pack, to get any kind of brand name recognition in front of consumers.

There are other means of creating brand differentiation, such as focusing on the size of the cigarettes or altering the naming itself.

Big cigarette brands are desperately trying to make this a trademark issue that the Australian government is laughing out of court. I would say that Australian tobacco companies are feeling this law's potential ramifications already.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and if other countries adopt laws similar to Australia's.

Technorati Tags: Cigarettes, Australia, tobacco, naming, Trademark

Posted by William Lozito at April 29, 2010 8:08 AM
Posted to Brand Naming | Licensing | Marketing | Product Naming | Trademarking

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Tracked on June 16, 2010 12:18 PM